


Club, Fall, Green

by chainocommand



Category: Marvel 616, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Allusions to PTSD, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:56:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainocommand/pseuds/chainocommand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has to meet SHIELD's psychiatrist. It's not working so he takes a wander around SHIELD headquarters, only to meet a questionably dressed Tony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Club, Fall, Green

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions of symptoms of PTSD - nightmare, hyper-vigilance.

Steve remembers watching Bucky fall. Brain reacts a second too slowly. Hand shoots out a second too slowly. Bucky takes forever to fall. The cloud at the base of the canyon obscures Bucky’s finally messy demise. Steve supposes he should be grateful for that – it would be more than he could bear to see his only friend reduced to broken bone and rendered flesh.

He’s sat in the chair they put in his ‘room’, looking out of the window. Times Square glowed outside, bathing him in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colour. He was sat in that hued square when the psychiatrist Nick Fury had sent came in.

‘Hello, Steve.’

‘Good afternoon, Doctor.’

‘How are you today?’ she asked, sitting down in the chair in the corner behind him.

‘I am well, Doctor, thank you,’ said Steve, staring out of the window. 

‘Nightmares again?’

‘I dreamt of Bucky dying again,’ said Steve.

‘What happened?’

‘The same thing as always,’ said Steve. ‘I reach out and he’s not there. He’s falling, and when I look down at my hands, they’re as they were before the serum.’

‘What do you think that means?’

‘Clearly it means that Bucky’s death makes me feel as inadequate and small as I did before Project: Rebirth.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

Steve looked over at the psychiatrist. ‘My best friend died. I was right there and he died. How do you think I feel about it?’

‘Why don’t you tell me?’

Steve stood up. ‘Forgive me, Doctor, but I don’t feel like discussing this again today. The dream wasn’t new, you can have no further insight, I would prefer not to relive the experience. Good afternoon, Doctor.’

He walked down the corridor, rubbing the back of his neck, feeling pain shoot up his head from the dip in the base of his skull. His head felt rather like it had the time a Nazi had clubbed him. 

 

He walked around the SHIELD headquarters with the thoughts of Bucky going around his head until he bumped into the man who was quickly becoming his new friend in this era. 

Tony Stark, who for some reason was wearing nothing but green camouflage paint. 

‘Mr. Stark, why are you naked?’ asked Steve.

‘Why do insist on calling me Mr. Stark?’ said Tony. ‘What did you call my father?’

‘Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark,’ said Steve. ‘Eventually Howard. But he had dropped me into enemy territory allowing me to save my best friend, and then saved my life twice.’

‘So, all I need to get you to call me by my first name is to put your life in danger and then save it twice?’ summarised Tony, leaning against the wall nonchalantly. ‘Can’t I give you money instead?’

‘I don’t want any money, Mr. Stark,’ said Steve.

‘How much money do you have?’ asked Tony.

Steve hummed and ahhed for a while about answering such an intimate question. ‘As a captain I made good money – five dollars a week. But I didn’t spend any of it.’

‘So... you have no idea how much money you have and no feasible way of making more?’ said Tony.

‘Not as such at this time, Mr. Stark,’ said Steve. ‘The bank requires proof that I am who I say I am.’

Tony sighed, rubbing his head, smearing the paint. ‘You call me Tony, I talk to the bank and get your account set up, agreed? That counts as saving your life, trust me.’

‘I suppose so, Mr. Stark, though I must say I would feel more comfortable being on a first name basis if you wore trousers. Why are you wearing paint and not clothing?’

‘New tech,’ Tony said casually, looking at his nails, ‘it’s meant to turn the wearer invisible. Unfortunately, at this point it’s only causing itches in some unpleasant places. Though that might be the stripper from last week.’ Tony looked away in thought. ‘Peps!’

‘Tony, put these on, now,’ Pepper hissed, throwing the trousers at Tony. 

‘Peps, make me a doctor’s appointment – I’m either allergic to the paint, or the stripper gave me the clap.’

‘Again? Poor thing,’ said Pepper.

‘Isn’t she sweet?’ said Tony to Steve.

‘I was referring to the stripper,’ said Pepper.

‘So was I.’

‘I have to go,’ said Steve, leaving the two of them to bicker about Tony’s tendency to walk around military instillations naked.

When he got back to his room the psychiatrist had left. Steve straightened the covers she had creased when she sat on his bed – when had she done that? She always took the chair behind her, even though Steve had asked her not to because it made him uncomfortable to have people behind him. It might be seventy years ago to them, but it was last week to Steve, and he still felt the eyes of snipers on him as he walked.

One week and they still acted like there was something wrong with him for being jumpy and off kilter. A week ago he was trekking through mountains, battling Nazis, trying to lead a specialised team through war torn Europe to end a man more dangerous than Hitler. Now it was the twenty-first century, everyone he knew was dead, and he was being told that the war that had defined him was no longer relevant in these modern times. 

But these modern times were not so different. Cars went faster, computers did more, and people thought they were so much more worldly than those in the quaint 1940s, but people were people at the end of it. There were still the warmongers, the lawyers, the ones who got by on their looks.

And there were still the inventors who walked around in war paint rather than clothing through the typing pool because they thought it was funny when the secretaries fainted. Tony Stark was not so different to the Howard Steve had known. Their antics still made Steve green around the gills when he heard about them (usually from a irate high ranking officer).


End file.
